‘Interstellar’ Soars Past $100 Million in IMAX Theaters

However you want to try and classify the experience, one thing seems certain: Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar has resonated with people. While most blockbuster films are aiming for premium ticket sales in an increasingly crowded 3D market, Nolan prefers not to use 3D shooting or post-conversion, instead opting to use the mammoth IMAX format to present as large a canvas as possible for the monumental stories he tries to tell.

Interstellar in many ways seems to be the most important work of the director’s in achieving a larger-than-life presentation given the themes of the sci-fi epic, and audiences seem to be turning out in droves to see the film exactly as the director has intended. According to a new piece from Variety, Interstellar has passed the $100 million gross threshold for presentation in IMAX theaters, a feat so rare that it deserves proper recognition. The piece notes that Interstellar has officially concluded its IMAX theatrical run in all but 12 locations, as the equipped theaters prepare to gangway for the imminent release of Peter Jackson’s “Middle-earth” finale in The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies, arriving at IMAX theaters on Friday.

Only three previous films have passed the $100 million IMAX mark, one of them also by director Christopher Nolan. They are 2013’s Gravity, 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises, and 2009’s Avatar. Although just over an hour of footage was natively captured using IMAX cameras, the rest of the film’s sequences shot in 35mm have been remastered using official IMAX technology, and likely stands as one of the purest experiences with the format to date. Nolan’s propensity for using IMAX technology in his films extends back to 2008’s The Dark Knight, and he’s employed it in some fashion in every film he’s made since then. As an advocate for the “spectacle” of the theatrical experience, its pretty easy to discern why that would be.

To date, Interstellar has grossed over $621 million worldwide, which in and of itself is quite a feat considering both the subject matter and the rather substantial runtime of 2 hrs. and 49 minutes. Still, Nolan seems to be in sync very effectively with the minds of audiences the world over: they want spectacle, and its very clear that Nolan has become one of the main players in giving it to them.